Continuing a string of high-profile international debates a century ago, �ֲ���ý hosted Cambridge University for a debate at Lewiston City Hall on Sept. 23, 1924.

Like NFL football’s foray into Europe in recent years, the emergence of international collegiate debate created a sensation in the early 1900s. And �ֲ���ý led the way.

In the early 20th century, the college’s reputation for debate was exploding. In 1921, mighty Oxford University, bypassing the Ivy League, invited �ֲ���ý to be Oxford’s first-ever U.S. foe. The debate took place on June 16, 1921, the first time an American college had traveled to Europe for a debate.

Newspapers around the U.S. were abuzz. “It is one of the prettiest incidents of the century,” reported the Sacramento (Calif.) Union. “It suggests emotions such as are aroused by winning a Carnegie hero medal,” adding that “surely more than one novel will be written about such a plot.” 

A year later, �ֲ���ý was the first college to host an overseas team, when Oxford chose �ֲ���ý as the first stop on its inaugural U.S. tour.

And in 1924, Cambridge sent its first debating team to the U.S. for a tour, choosing �ֲ���ý as their first foe. Here are some CatFacts about that historic first meeting:

1. The debate topic had to do with a familiar geopolitical foe

The topic was, “Resolved: That all countries should recognize the present government of Russia.” The Soviet Union had officially been established in December 1922, making the topic highly relevant. (The U.S. didn’t recognize the USSR until 1933.)

2. The teams had debaters who would go on to become future leaders in their respective countries

The �ֲ���ý side included Erwin Canham, Class of 1925, who built the Christian Science Monitor into a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, one of “the most respected and influential publications in the country,” according to The Washington Post.

Also on the �ֲ���ý side was John Preston Davis, Class of 1926, co-founder and director of the National Negro Congress, an important civil rights organization that worked toward racial equality in the workforce, in the U.S. and abroad.

On the Cambridge side, there was a future Conservative Party leader, Richard Austen Butler, who would become deputy prime minister to Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan.

3. �ֲ���ý President Clifton Daggett Gray wanted to greet Cambridge debaters, but it didn’t work out

Gray had hoped to drive the 400 miles to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to meet the British debaters, but he took sick, so a prominent local clergyman, the Rev. George F. Finnie took his place.

4. The Cambridge debaters threw shade at their historic rival, Oxford University

The hosts and the local press were curious about the difference between the two great English universities, and the Cambridge debaters obliged. “Oxford is a college for gentlemen’s sons, and Cambridge is a college for gentlemen,” said Cambridge debater A.P. Marshall.

5. The debate took place at Lewiston City Hall

A century ago, Lewiston City Hall included a large auditorium that could accommodate boxing matches, dances, concerts, basketball games, charity dinners, and big events like a Cambridge–�ֲ���ý debate. The auditorium is now office space.

6. The debate format was new to the era

Rather than a �ֲ���ý team vs. Cambridge team, the squads were mixed, with two �ֲ���ý debaters and one Cambridge debater on the negative side, and vice versa on the affirmative side.

On the affirmative side, �ֲ���ý’ John Preston Davis joined A.P. Marshall and Gerald Sparrow of Cambridge. On the negative side, R.A. Butler of Cambridge joined �ֲ���ý’ Erwin Canham and Fred T. Googins, Class of 1927.

In addition, rather than a decision by judges, as was custom in the U.S., the debate would be decided by audience ballot, more common in Great Britain.

7. The Cambridge team stayed at a famous nearby resort

Though the Gilded Age heyday of the Poland Spring Hotel was fading, it was still a marquee hotel, perfect for the Cambridge team.

Other notable visitors in the era were U.S. presidents William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, and Warren Harding; Joseph Kennedy and his family; famous athletes like Babe Ruth; and entertainers like John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Durante. 

8. The visitors were feted at a local hotel that gained notoriety for a racist incident

The DeWitt was a prominent downtown Lewiston hotel in the era. In 1945, Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920, returned to Lewiston for a visit. At the time he was president of Morehouse College. �ֲ���ý President Charles F. Phillips and Professor of Religion Rayborn Zerby, among others, intended to dine with Mays at the Dewitt, but the hotel refused to serve the group if Mays attended.

The �ֲ���ý Student protested the racist act, writing, “We at the college never fail to give lip service to equality — now is the time to publicly express our beliefs. As Dr. Mays said in his discussion with the students, ‘You believe in a thing only so long as you practice it.’” 

9. A congressman hosted the debate

U.S. Rep. Carroll Beedy (R-Maine), Class of 1903, presided over the debate in City Hall, telling the audience of 1,000 that international debate helps create international understanding. “Peace between individuals leads to peace between nations.”

10. �ֲ���ý won the match (sort of)

The vote was a landslide, 800–150, in favor of the negative side of the question.

Even though the two teams were mixed, the local papers declared it a victory for �ֲ���ý, which had two debaters on the negative side.

The negative team argued that the Russian government was not to be trusted, and thus not to be recognized. Fred Googins of �ֲ���ý told the huge crowd in City Hall to beware: “There was proof of Soviet interference in America.”

By helping students at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, a high school for orphaned and vulnerable youth in rural Rwanda, to think and speak about the society they want to see, “the project will contribute to cultivating Rwanda’s next generation of peace- and changemakers,” Whidden, a politics major, wrote in her grant proposal.

Twenty-five years after the genocide that devastated the country, one of Rwanda’s central development goals is to strengthen open dialogue and critical thinking, particularly among the country’s youth.

To that end, Whidden, a veteran of �ֲ���ý’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council, and staff in the Village’s career center will develop a debate curriculum, culminating in a weeklong camp. The curriculum will address the triple goals of critical thinking, public speaking, and English language learning.

“The goal of developing this curriculum is to give students the skills to think and question for themselves, rather than having some white Western individual coming in and trying to challenge certain ideas or status quos,” Whidden said in a recent interview. “It’s not for me to come in and question those things for them but to give them the tools to start asking those questions for themselves.”

Whidden, of New York City, first traveled to Rwanda during Short Term in 2015, as part of a documentary filmmaking course looking at post-genocide reconstruction, taught by Professor of French and Francophone Studies Alexandre Dauge-Roth. Back on campus, she completed a semester-long research project on post-conflict development in Rwanda.

With funding from the �ֲ���ý Purposeful Work internship program, she returned to the country in  summer 2017 as an intern for the Village. She worked in the school’s career center, taught an accelerated English course, and created a peer-mentoring program.

“I had a really incredible experience working there,” Whidden said. “I became really close with my students — especially with my debaters, who were remarkable — and I built a strong relationship with my supervisor and with the director of the Village.”

After her eight weeks at the Village this year, Whidden will move to Morocco on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award. In the meantime, she’s grateful for the chance to return to the school.

“It’s a complete privilege and remarkable opportunity to give back to and continue to work with an organization that was really formative in my personal and professional development,” she said.

In August 1926, John Preston Davis sent a letter to Louis Costello, a �ֲ���ý alumnus and former debater who was now a college trustee and Lewiston newspaper executive.

Davis himself had graduated that spring, leaving an impressive legacy as a debater. President of the Debating Council and editor of The �ֲ���ý Student, he competed internationally and was part of a team that defeated debaters from Oxford. After graduation, Davis moved to New York City, to put his written and oratorical talents to practice in the flourishing Harlem Renaissance.

“Delta Sigma Rho should not be allowed to continue as a �ֲ���ý organization.”

In New York, Davis decided to escalate his efforts to correct an injustice that he felt the college had not done enough to address. At the time, the highest honor a �ֲ���ý debater could achieve was induction into Delta Sigma Rho, the national debating honor society. Davis met every requirement except one: The society did not admit black members.

In 1926, recent graduate John P. Davis protested �ֲ���ý‘ membership in Delta Sigma Rho, a debating honor society that at the time excluded black debaters. Here, he is pictured, second from left, with H.H. Walker ’26, debate coach A. Craig Baird, Erwin Canham ’25, and Fred Googins ’27. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections)

In his letter to Costello — himself a Delta Sigma Rho member of the Class of 1898 — Davis said that “either Negro students should be frankly told before being mis-led into coming to �ֲ���ý that privileges which are open to other students are in their case to be abridged; or else, Delta Sigma Rho should not be allowed to continue as a �ֲ���ý organization.”

Davis’ letter was the latest to point out this stark conflict between �ֲ���ý’ ideals and the reality in which it operated. Correspondence, articles, and meeting minutes in �ֲ���ý’ Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library tell the story of the fraught and frustrating effort the college and its debaters made to get Delta Sigma Rho to admit black members.

Ultimately, it took two decades and a change in the national organization’s leadership before the society reversed its exclusion of black debaters.

Founded in 1906, Delta Sigma Rho’s central goal was to promote excellence in debating and raise the prestige of its members. The �ֲ���ý Student trumpeted the creation of a chapter at �ֲ���ý in 1915, even as it assured its readers that despite the Greek letters, it wasn’t that kind of fraternity.

“This is an honor reserved for colleges that have made their mark in intercollegiate debating contests, and is an honor that all �ֲ���ý people will prize,” said the Student.

When �ֲ���ý joined, Delta Sigma Rho did not have a formal rule excluding black debaters. But when �ֲ���ý advanced the nomination of one of its star debaters, Arthur Dyer, who was black, the team quickly found out that the national organization enforced an unwritten policy of segregation.

“This provision must be adhered to by all chapters,” wrote national secretary-treasurer Stanley B. Houck in 1916 to Harry Rowe, �ֲ���ý Class of 1912.

Rowe, the chapter’s secretary, was just beginning his long tenure as a �ֲ���ý administrator, and Houck, his correspondent, would be a fixture in the national organization for decades to come. To prevent integration Houck would, at least on paper, appeal to the cohesion of the organization.

Arthur Dyer (left), Class of 1917, was the initial African American debater from �ֲ���ý to be excluded from Delta Sigma Rho. He poses with fellow 1916–17 debaters Mervin Ames, Charles Mayoh, and Brooks Quimby. As �ֲ���ý’ director of debate, Quimby would later take up the fight to integrate Delta Sigma Rho. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“The possible injury done to a few negroes by excluding them from membership would be offset by the good which the society could do in the South,” he wrote. “The welfare of the society required that there be no split between the Northern and Southern chapters on this issue.”

The �ֲ���ý debate council went ahead with solidifying its Delta Sigma Rho chapter and inducting members, but at its first annual meeting in 1916, Rowe was told to write again to Houck “concerning �ֲ���ý’ feeling in the matter of exclusion of negroes from membership,” according to the meeting minutes.

Rowe also sought other colleges’ support for a petition ahead of a National Council meeting in 1917, asking the University of Chicago for “your moral and active support in presenting a re-opening and re-consideration of the matter.”

“It seems to me,” Rowe wrote, “that if Phi Beta Kappa, an old and long established honor society makes no reservation as to race, color, creed, or sex, that Delta Sigma Rho might well follow this good example.”

Other Northern colleges seemed to be on the same page — Williams College asked �ֲ���ý to support its own measure at the national meeting. Their efforts failed. “I personally appeared before the National Council at New Haven and remonstrated on their ruling, and was told that Chapters were not admitting colored men,” Rowe wrote in 1920 to Arthur Dyer, who had graduated three years earlier.

In 1920, Rowe wrote to the national conference, again asking it to change the rule. That year, Benjamin E. Mays, the future civil rights leader who served as president of the Debating Council and would have been eligible for Delta Sigma Rho membership, had graduated.

As a longtime �ֲ���ý administrator, 1912 graduate Harry Rowe (left), a Delta Sigma Rho member, was the �ֲ���ý point person in efforts to change the honor society’s racist membership rules. He’s shown in 1912 with fellow debaters Wade Grindle and Gordon Cave. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Not only were those efforts unsuccessful, but the society doubled down, officially changing its constitution to prohibit black members. Delta Sigma Rho held another national council in 1922, but since it was in Iowa, �ֲ���ý could not send a representative. The chapter did, however, submit a petition to strike the phrase “not a negro” from the national constitution’s list of membership requirements.

The petition was less about taking a moral stand against racism and more about appeasing the chapters that did want to exclude black members; it emphasized that local chapters should have as much autonomy as possible. “The policy of local autonomy is very definitely limited by inability to elect negroes to membership,” the petition said. That petition, too, failed.

Meanwhile, �ֲ���ý enjoyed the prestige and the networking opportunities that the society afforded its white members. �ֲ���ý’ debating victories and its methods were covered extensively in Delta Sigma Rho’s publication, and debate faculty contributed articles. Around Commencement each year, The �ֲ���ý Student published the names of new inductees, along with those inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1926, John P. Davis became eligible for membership in every way except his race. Meeting minutes in June of that year record that Marion J. Crosby, the chapter secretary-treasurer, was instructed to write to the national secretary, asking permission to induct Davis.

Houck, now the president of Delta Sigma Rho, replied with a firm, racist no. “Several negroes had been elected to membership with exactly the same result in each case, namely, the wrecking of the chapter and its practical non-existence as a functioning organization until the negro passed out of college and the memory of the members of the chapter,” he wrote.

(The society did not, as it happened, have a problem with women and with members of other minority groups becoming members).

“The �ֲ���ý College chapter of Delta Sigma Rho can officially bestow upon and accord Mr. John Davis any distinct and special recognition for his ability as a debater which it considers desirable or appropriate,” Houck wrote, “so long as the recognition does not take the form of membership.”

Three weeks later, Davis wrote his letter to Costello, prompting Rowe, debate coach and professor J. Murray Carroll, and �ֲ���ý professor and Delta Sigma Rho member Oliver F. Cutts to submit a statement to the college trustees.

“Some feel that �ֲ���ý should no longer retain her charter,” they wrote.

“Others believe that altho the attitude of the national organization is regrettable, it is not the fault of �ֲ���ý, but rather a part of the general disability under which negroes labor, and if �ֲ���ý takes this course it will only deny her students the advantages of affiliation with this honor society without in any degree furthering the rights of the negro.”

The question of racism “stirred us up a bit,” wrote Brooks Quimby, the 1918 graduate who would later become a college legend as director of debate.

In 1920, Benjamin Mays (standing at center, with members of the 1919 �ֲ���ý debate team) became the second �ֲ���ý debater to be excluded from Delta Sigma Rho. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Getting the segregation rule changed, however, only became more difficult. During the 1920s, Delta Sigma Rho changed two key procedural rules: Not only did meetings now take place every five years, but any constitutional changes required the approval of four-fifths of the local chapters.

So the �ֲ���ý chapter began, again, to gather support for a rule change ahead of the 1931 national council. Case Western Reserve University mounted its own campaign on behalf of one of its debaters, and the Wisconsin Legislature even passed a resolution urging Delta Sigma Rho to integrate so that a star University of Wisconsin debater could join.

“I see no credit in such logicians in a society like ours.”

Before the conference, Quimby wrote to Houck to let him know that �ֲ���ý’ delegate would again try to get the chapters to vote to change the rule. Houck replied that he himself would put the matter to a vote — but he didn’t do so.

“Our delegate felt that both Houck and [vice president Gilbert] Hall did all they could to prevent the vote,” Quimby later wrote. “Mrs. Hall made the most remarkable argument to our delegate; that the reason that negroes wanted to get into D.S.R. was so that they could marry white women!”

�ֲ���ý had not asked for full integration of Delta Sigma Rho, but that each chapter be allowed to make its own decision. “We shall be sorry if this causes any chapters to leave,” Quimby continued, “but, personally, I see no credit in such logicians in a society like ours.”

In the end, the 1931 national council did vote on whether to admit black members, and a strong majority voted yes — but not the four-fifths required for the measure to pass.

Delta Sigma Rho therefore remained segregated, but the damage to its leadership was done. Houck was re-elected president but, sensing a loss of support, resigned a couple months later. The new president was H.L. Ewbank of the University of Wisconsin, with Quimby joining the national leadership as vice president.

The groundswell of support for integration and the leadership shakeup did not translate into a sense of urgency — or perhaps procedural rules prohibited swift action. It was another four years before the prohibition against black members was finally lifted. Dyer, Mays, and Davis became eligible for Delta Sigma Rho membership.

By then, Davis had earned a law degree and was deep into a fight to ensure that African Americans were included in New Deal programs. In 1935, he helped found the National Negro Congress, an important civil rights organization, and became its executive director.

It seems Davis did not join Delta Sigma Rho. Over the next several decades, the organization would merge with a rival debating society. �ֲ���ý is no longer a member.

Likely taken in Washington, D.C., in April 1940, this photo shows �ֲ���ý alumnus John P. Davis (left), then executive secretary of the National Negro Congress, with Max Yergan (center) and U. Simpson Tate, congress president and treasurer, respectively. (Photo by Scurlock Studios/ Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History Archives Center)

Mays sent Brooks Quimby $17 for his membership dues. Soon to become the president of Morehouse College and earn the title “schoolmaster of the Civil Rights Movement,” he would be featured prominently as a distinguished Delta Sigma Rho member.

“It was my impression when I was in college that �ֲ���ý had tried to make it possible for Negroes to become members of the National Forensic society of Delta Sigma Rho,” Mays wrote. “It is gratifying to know that �ֲ���ý has kept on the job, and that after many years of effort she has won.”

Sources

For his senior honors thesis, Tom Connolly ’79 chronicled the history of �ֲ���ý debate, including an entire chapter on the Delta Sigma Rho controversy. The thesis includes materials and personal conversations that are not available elsewhere, and is an invaluable source for future histories. It is available in the �ֲ���ý archives.

The late Professor of Rhetoric and Director of Debate Robert Branham contributed a chapter about Benjamin Mays’ experience with debate, including the Delta Sigma Rho controversy, to Walking Integrity, a Mays biography. Branham, who died in 1999, also produced several documentaries, including one on John Davis ().

The Delta Sigma Rho issue is also addressed in the college history �ֲ���ý Through the Years, by the late Charles Clark ’51.

“The commons” is a term applied to things that belong to everyone and to no one — things like the oceans, intellectual property, and cyberspace. Since his days at �ֲ���ý, Christopher Crum ’17 has been a student of this concept and of the legal means that people devise to stake a claim on the commons.

Crum’s interest recently received some powerful validation: a highly competitive Marshall Scholarship, which will support two years of postgraduate study in the U.K.

One of 48 recipients of a 2019 Marshall Scholarship (selected from more than 1,000 applicants), and only the second from �ֲ���ý since the program was founded in 1953, Crum will take a hiatus from Chicago Law to spend his two years at the University of Oxford. (Linda Griffiths Johnston ’79, a music major who also went on to Oxford, was the first Marshall Scholar from �ֲ���ý.)

At �ֲ���ý, Crum’s award-winning honors thesis in history scrutinized 17th-century intellectual debates over ownership of the seas, comparing arguments made by Portuguese jurists with those from other naval powers.

These days, he’s focused on a wholly contemporary, even exigent, slice of the commons: the internet and social media, and ways they’re undermining politics and society. A second-year student at the University of Chicago Law School, he’s interested in legal measures that governments might take to protect the integrity of elections, journalism, and data privacy.

At Oxford, Crum will dedicate the first year to a study of the social science of the internet at the Oxford Internet Institute, coming away with a master of science degree. Independent research culminating in a master of philosophy will consume the second year. Thereafter he’ll complete his law degree at Chicago.

“Chris was simply masterful at facilitating difficult conversations among his peers.”

Funded by the British government and offered only to U.S. citizens, the Marshall Scholarships are meant to strengthen bonds between the two countries. The program is named for World War II general and U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, whose name also distinguished the famous, massive aid plan intended to get war-ravaged Europe back on its feet.

While Crum admits to thinking that he was a long shot for a Marshall Scholarship, no one familiar with his �ֲ���ý accomplishments will be too surprised that he received the honor. A Dana Scholar, he headed for Chicago supported in part by �ֲ���ý’ Raymond J. Oakes Fellowship for continuing legal studies.

Then there’s his thesis. Its potential won him the John Cole Prize for historical research, and the final product earned the Ernest P. Miller Prize for most outstanding history thesis. “Besides his academic successes and intellectual gifts, something that particularly impressed me about Chris was his tenacity,” says history professor Karen Melvin, Crum’s thesis adviser.

“He exerted an enormous amount of energy trying to track down an elusive primary source. He communicated with librarians in Australia, the Czech Republic, and England before eventually sneaking in a trip to the National Library in London during a couple of free hours while in route to a debate tournament in Oxford.”

Shown in the lobby of his campus residence, Chu Hall, Chris Crum reads an essay about the U.S. House of Representatives for a politics course in 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Alongside his academic achievements, Crum’s co-curricular contributions also stood out, notes Dean of Students Joshua McIntosh. Crum was prominent in debate, and served as an AESOP leader and Admission tour guide. And, as a member of an organizational review board in the �ֲ���ý student government, he played an instrumental role in navigating that body through an especially challenging time.

In that context, says McIntosh, “I was able to observe Chris’s many talents, courage, and character. He was simply masterful at facilitating difficult conversations among his peers, being sure to provide space for different perspectives to be shared and engaging in difficult discourse in a civil manner, even when emotions ran high.

“Chris’s calm, steady, and diplomatic approach to leadership is what allowed the issues to be resolved and to help student government move forward.”

Crum spoke to us from a vacant classroom in the University of Chicago’s Harper Library just moments after a morning of classes and just days before the start of finals.

How did the ownership of the seas lead to the dark side of the internet?

I wasn’t really sure how to take that [earlier interest] and put it into practice following the �ֲ���ý ethos of trying, in a very clichéd phrase, to make the world a better place.

After I graduated, I took an internship at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, at Harvard. And there the pieces all came together. The internet positively affects society, too, but the problems with it were really front and center [in the work] at the Berkman Klein Center.

I was going to law school in the fall, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that would give me the space to really explore how all of these ideas fit together. And that’s where I got the idea of applying to the Oxford Internet Institute, which is essentially a degree-granting version of the Berkman Klein Center.

An objective of the Marshall Scholarship program is to help scholars better understand Britain, and thereby strengthen ties between our two countries. How will that work in your case?

Something that has to happen as a result of Brexit is that the European Union and the United Kingdom will need to set up some sort of new data-sharing agreement. Depending on what that agreement ends up looking like, the U.K. and the U.S. are going to have to renegotiate data sharing across their borders. Given the sort of America-first rhetoric coming out of the U.S., for better or worse, it’s a lot more difficult to cooperate with other countries on things like free-trade agreements or in this case, free data-flow agreements.

I’m really hoping to understand what a potential data-sharing agreement between the U.S. and U.K. could look like, and whether or not it’s going to be predominantly informed by European conceptions of privacy, English conceptions, or, you know, whether an American idea of privacy is going to predominate.

And that has very deep consequences for the special relationship between our countries. Whether or not we are able to cooperate on this fundamental issue of data-sharing across borders, is really, I think, a marker of the health of the relationship.

There’s ample reason to worry about the corrosive effects of the internet and social media on democracy. You’re looking at data privacy in particular. How do privacy and democracy interact in the digital realm?

Marshall Scholar Chris Crum at the University of Chicago Law School. (Jean Lachat/University of Chicago)

I’m not a political theorist, but I think privacy is fundamental to people operating independently in a society. If there is information that only I know, I can choose whether to give it to other people. That imbues a sense of control, a sense of agency, that is important because it allows people to function more independently.

In addition, a pluralistic society, like the United States aspires to be, depends on people having different understandings of the world and different political views. And in an ideal world, we let the crucible of the political process determine what’s best for the majority of people. Information privacy allows people to develop views that are crucial to that sort of pluralistic society. It’s a theory, but I don’t think it’s implausible.

You received the Libby Prize for contributions to the Brooks Quimby Debate Council not once, but twice. How did the BQDC contribute to you?

Chris Crum and fellow debaters get ready for a van trip to a match at Harvard in October 2013. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In a lot of ways, debate was my life at �ֲ���ý. A significant majority of my friends were on the debate team, I spent a lot of weekends traveling for debate, we practiced three times a week. I’m very lucky that I found the debate team early on in my college experience.

Debate taught me how to put together an argument, and that’s the most invaluable part of, really, anything I’ve ever done. And that’s not an exaggeration. You know, my papers got better a month after I joined the debate team. And it’s served me incredibly well in law school. I have to say that it really does play well in job interviews, when I can say that my favorite extracurricular activity is competitively solving problems on the weekend.

It also was sort of an entrée into Oxford. My senior year, the team went to the Oxford Intervarsity Debating Competition. Oxford is just such a gorgeous place, the libraries are amazing, and I thought, if this could be in my future, that would just be the icing on the cake.

Zoë Seaman-Grant ’17 of Charleston, S.C., one of the most accomplished debaters in the illustrious history of �ֲ���ý debate, explains what she loves about the mind-challenging pursuit: “listening to intelligent people say things about topics that you might never have thought about before — and they’re your peers.”

Downstairs, rhetoric students and Quimby Debate Council members, along with rhetoric professor Stephanie Kelley-Romano and debate coach Jan Hovdin, watched the debate on a large screen. Armed with rhetorical and campaign insights, they found great humor in a candidate's unorthodox support of legalized marijuana. Photo by Maddy Talias '13.

MPBN reporter A.J. Higgins listens to a candidate's comments. Photo by Rene Minnis.

Audience members in the Concert Hall take in the proceedings. Photo by Rene Minnis.

The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall stage is filled with the trappings of a political debate. Photo by Rene Minnis.

Independent candidate Eliot Cutler gets fitted with his microphone. Photo by Rene Minnis.

If the absence of Republican candidate Paul LePage from last night’s gubernatorial showdown at �ֲ���ý disappointed some spectators, you wouldn’t have known it from the debate watch party that took place just downstairs from the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Though attentive and informed, the 50 or so students — for the most part Quimby Debate Council members and students in a campaign rhetoric course — still brought a certain wisenheimer energy to the gathering as they and their professors watched the Maine Public Broadcasting Network debate on the big screen.

Of course there were cheers whenever �ֲ���ý was mentioned, and a particular candidate’s folksy appeals to the viewers at home reliably drew a response. But the laughter and exuberant mock applause practically broke through the ceiling when candidate Kevin Scott, alone among the four, expressed support for a conditional legalization of marijuana.

“I laughed too,” said Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano. “It was so unexpected and unorthodox for a candidate.”

• of the Oct. 28 Maine Public Broadcasting Network gubernatorial debate at �ֲ���ý.

• Muskie-flavored welcome to the audience.

Featuring four of the five candidates for the Blaine House — Democrat Elizabeth Mitchell and independents Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody and Scott — the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall capped a day at �ֲ���ý largely centered around the event. A crew from MPBN was on hand bright and early to start setting up in the concert hall, and �ֲ���ý folks from Facility Services and Dining Services had plenty to do setting up green rooms for the debaters and prepping the Museum of Art for a welcoming reception.

Public events began with a late-afternoon presentation, by seven students, designed to give spectators context for the main event that evening. Four members of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council summarized the candidates’ positions on the economy, social issues and the environment. And three students from Kelley-Romano’s “Presidential Campaign Rhetoric” course offered tips on debate strategy and likely outcomes.

The seven had done their homework. Quimbyites Nate Sweet ’11, Sam Schleipman ’12, Spencer Collett ’13 and Daniel Lambright ’12 effectively differentiated the candidates (including LePage, who bailed out of the debate the day before), providing basic themes for each contender that were helpful in relating them to larger currents of political thought.

From Kelley-Romano’s course, Kevin McCandlish ’13, Daniel Waters ’12 and Jordan Conwell ’12 laid out debate strategy and tactics. If candidate debates offer great insights into policy, Waters noted, the real takeaway is so-called relational strategies — the language, posture and gestures candidates use when they address each other.

A debate has less to do with scoring policy points, he said, and “everything to do with how candidates are judged [as people] by the voting public.”

Partners from way back

The evening’s events picked up momentum around 6 p.m. as guests, ultimately 100 or so, converged at the Museum of Art for a reception co-hosted by �ֲ���ý and MPBN. �ֲ���ý President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and MPBN President Jim Dowe welcomed the visitors, both taking care to remind us that, in fact, the relationship between the two organizations goes back a ways: �ֲ���ý and sister colleges Bowdoin and Colby founded WCBB, one component of what’s now MPBN, back in 1961.

“MPBN wouldn’t exist without �ֲ���ý,” Dowe said, recalling that then-�ֲ���ý President Charles Phillips was among a �ֲ���ý group that went to Washington on the first day that licenses for public television were issued, in the early 1960s. “They waited on the steps for the doors to open” at the FCC, Dowe said.

“It’s very fitting for us to host debates at �ֲ���ý,” Hansen said, referring not only to the college’s long and proud debate history, but also to the fact that the city of Lewiston welcomed �ֲ���ý debates in City Hall before the college had a suitable venue of its own. Now, she said, “we’re thrilled to be able to reciprocate.”

As the hennaed Moroccan women of Lalla Essaydi’s photographs looked on, guests at the reception sipped champagne and munched chilled shrimp, chocolate-dipped strawberries and mustard-rubbed lamb.

In attendance were members of local government such as Auburn Mayor Dick Gleason P’93; well-known �ֲ���ý faces such as dance program founder Marcy Plavin and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and state Rep. Richard Wagner; and two of the candidates, Shawn Moody — with son James ’12 — and Kevin Scott. A second �ֲ���ý student had a candidate connection too — David Cutler ’12, nephew of Eliot.

No empty podium

As showtime drew near, MPBN crew members, all in black shirts, put the final touches on the stage and camera setup. Would there be a symbolic empty podium for the absent Lepage, we asked? No, one staffer joked, “but we did get them from Marden’s.” (LePage is general manager of the discount store chain.)

By showtime, about 280 of the Olin concert hall’s 300 seats were filled. About half the audience was invited, with the rest of the seats going to members of the �ֲ���ý community, including some 70 students.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman greeted the gathering. Picking up the thread from Hansen of �ֲ���ý’ debate history, he raised the spirit of a great Maine and U.S. politician who, before all that, was a debater at �ֲ���ý: Edmund S. Muskie ’36.

Baughman pointed out that when Muskie ran for governor in the mid-1950s, the candidates never debated one another. So even in a political season as rancorous as this one, it’s clear that there has been at least some kind of progress.

Indeed, as silly as the students got during the watch party in the basement, there was no question that each had a critical eye — in the best sense — on the discourse emanating from the auditorium upstairs.

In an age when so many potential voters shun the polls, director of debate Jan Hovden said before the event, “anything that engages people in the political process is a good thing in and of itself.”

Debate gives you criteria for framing your ideas. It allows you think critically and get straight to the issue. The skills are applicable in all of your classes, in writing papers and framing theses and in everyday life.

Typically only ten percent of our incoming members have previous debate experience. At the beginning of each year, there is an emphasis on preparing novices for their first tournament. Most are ready to compete within a week, and they are working independently with little oversight within a few months. Some of our most successful debaters had no experience prior to joining the team.

�ֲ���ý has the resources to send more people internationally than just about any of the schools we regularly compete against. Every year we send teams to World Championships, which was in Bangkok last year and Cork, Ireland, this year. As a freshman, I traveled to California for a debate at Stanford. During my sophomore year I debated at Newcastle and Durham, England, and I attended the World Championships in Vancouver as a judge. That degree of travel is atypical even for �ֲ���ý, but many team members will travel internationally before they graduate.

Read about the history of debate at �ֲ���ý:

www.bates.edu/debate-history.xml

recently sent six debaters to the prestigious Cambridge University Cleary Gottlieb Intervarsity Tournament, hosted by .

The �ֲ���ý team composed of Geoff Shaughnessy ’09 of Hanover, N.H., and Ariela Silberstein ’10 of New York City, advanced to the tournament’s quarterfinals. Ranked 16th in the tournament overall, the pair scored second among approximately 10 American teams entered. One of the other U.S. teams, MIT, won the tournament, in which 85 international teams competed.

Schools Shaughnessy and Silberstein faced included Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Newcastle, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the London School of Economics.

Also competing for �ֲ���ý were the teams of Jared Levy ’09 of Ardmore, Pa., and Matthew Marienthal ’10 of Chicago, Ill., who ranked 25th at the tournament; and David Kelly ’09 of Bangor and Rachel Kurzius ’10 of Ridgewood, N.J., who ranked 27th. �ֲ���ý debate coach Jan Hovden and adjudicators Alicia Orkisz ’10 of Bridgewater, Conn., and Walter Garcia ’11 of Stonington accompanied the three �ֲ���ý teams.

Marienthal and Shaughnessy tied to receive the tournament’s 40th individual speaker award, while Silberstein received the 54th.

“It was an honor to represent �ֲ���ý abroad, and the Cambridge tournament provided us with an amazing opportunity to debate schools from not only the United Kingdom but around Europe and Asia as well,” says Silberstein, communications director for the Quimby society.

�ֲ���ý debated motions on a variety of topics, including fair trade equity, organ donation, asylum for illegal immigrants trafficked into first-world countries as sex workers, and the “Bush doctrine.”

“The style of has some marked differences from the American style, but �ֲ���ý’ tremendous successes abroad have proven time and time again the unique versatility of our debating program,” Silberstein says. “The Brooks Quimby Debate Council prepares its members to compete and win not only on home turf but also in environments quite far removed from our campus. Our program fosters a general appreciation for debate and argumentation.”

�ֲ���ý debaters have enjoyed a sucessful fall 2008 season. At Tufts University in November, Danny Bousquet ’09 of Savannah, Ga., and Colin Etnire ’12 of San Francisco broke to octofinals. At Harvard University in October, the novice pairs of Mircea Lupu ’11 of Northville, Mich., and Andrew Wong ’12 of Ipoh, Malaysia, broke to novice finals. Ally Mandra ’12 of Brewster, N.Y., and Monica Rodriguez ’12 of Stamford, Conn., broke to semifinals.

At the end of December, �ֲ���ý sends Marienthal and Levy to Cork, Ireland, for the . Accompanied by coach Hovden and Kurzius and Silberstein as adjudicators, the �ֲ���ý team will compete against more than 1,000 participants representing 176 of the world’s finest educational institutions from 41 countries.